Sharps Pixley Sovereign Collection

Sharps Pixley was formed by the merger in 1957 of two of London’s venerable gold dealers, Sharps & Wilkins (established in 1778) and Pixley & Abell (established in 1852). The company was acquired by Kleinwort Benson Ltd in 1966, which later sold it to Deutsche Morgan Grenfell in 1993.

The meeting shown in the photo was arranged in order to show the Sharps Pixley collection of Sovereigns to Mr Annenberg, when he was US Ambassador to the UK. The collection included virtually every Sovereign minted by the Royal Mint from 1817 onwards, together with many rare Sovereigns that had been minted in the Royal Mint’s branches in Australia, South Africa, Canada and India.

The trading of Sovereigns was a very important part of the gold market in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, a significant part of the UK gold reserves was still held in the form of Sovereigns for which there was a healthy global demand, fed to a significant degree by the Swiss banks in Zürich. The members of the London Gold Market and the Bank of England regularly exchanged bags of Sovereigns for Good Delivery bars. The standard deal was 17 bags each containing 1,000 Sovereigns and weighing approximately 4,000 troy ounces in exchange for ten large bars each weighing approximately 400 troy ounces.

Deutsche Bank then ceased to use the Sharps Pixley name in its gold trading, but the company name was later revived after being purchased by a group led by Ross Norman, who set up a new London-based gold trading company in 2010 using this famous name.